The Sacred Ghost Town Of Ani, City Of 1001 Churches: Deserted By Man, Destroyed By Nature

First mentioned in the 5th century by Armenian chroniclers, the “Ghost City” of Ani was described as a strong fortress on a hilltop that was a possession of the Armenian Kamsarakan dynasty. From this point on and throughout its occupation, the site had a turbulent history: changing hands multiple times, withstanding sieges, massacres, earthquakes, and looting – which led to its eventual abandonment. Despite this, the site has been seen as a place of extreme beauty, architectural marvel, and rich history for both the Turks and Armenians. While it remains a point of contention between these two nationalities, it is currently being restored, and conserved as an important piece of world history which may lead to it being named a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Ruins of the Cathedral of Ani and the church of Redeemer in Ani, an ancient capital of Armenia in the 10th century. ( CC BY 2.0 )

The Growth Of An Armenian Capital

In the 9th century, Ani had been incorporated in the territories of the Armenian Bagratuni dynasty. At this time, the capital of the territory moved from Bagaran to Shirakavan, and then Kars. Finally, the capital was moved to Ani in 961. It was during this time that Ani began its rapid expansion, and in 992 the Armenian Catholicosate, the hierarchical see of the apostolic church, moved its seat to Ani. By the start of the 11th century the population of Ani was well over 100,000 and it gained renown as the “city of forty gates” and the “city of a thousand and one churches.” Ani also became the site of the royal mausoleum of the Bagratuni kings of Armenia. In the middle of the 11th century, King Gagik II opposed several Byzantine armies and was able to fend them off for a time. However, in 1046, Ani surrendered to the Byzantines and a Byzantine governor was installed in the city.

Captured &
Contested City

In 1064, a large Seljuk army attacked Ani, and after a 25 day siege the city was captured decimating its population. In 1072, the Seljuks sold Ani to the Shaddadids, a Muslim Kurdish dynasty. At this time, the Shaddadids employed a conciliatory policy towards the city’s predominantly Armenian and Christian populace. However, the people found their new rulers too intolerant and they appealed to the Christian kingdom of Georgia. Between 1124 and 1209, the city moved back and forth between the Georgians and the Shaddadids numerous times until it was finally captured by the Georgians. In 1236, the Mongols captured the city and massacred much of the population. By the 14 th century, the city was under the control of local Turkish dynasties and soon became part of the Ottoman Empire. An earthquake devastated the site in 1319, reducing the city to a mere village. In 1735 the site was completely abandoned when the last monks left the monastery.

The religious landscape of the medieval Armenian city of Ani, now in Turkey, as viewed from Armenia. (CC BY SA 3.0 )

Religious Remains

Called the “city of a thousand and once churches”, archaeologists have found at least 40 churches, chapels, and mausoleums, all designed by the greatest architectural and artistic minds of their time. The Cathedral of Ani stands above the city, despite its collapsed dome and destroyed northwest corner it remains imposing in scale. It was completed in 1001 by the Armenian King Gagik I, at the peak of prosperity in the city, and designed by Trdat, the renowned Armenian architect who also served the Byzantines by helping them repair the dome of Hagia Sophia.

Two people sitting inside the Cathedral of Ani just a hundred metres from the border of Armenia. Large parts of the roof have fallen down, allowing daylight to find its way into the building. ( CC BY SA 3.0 )

The Church of the Redeemer stands today as half a church propped up by scaffolding. However, in its time it was an architectural marvel featuring 19 archways and a dome, all made from local reddish-brown volcanic basalt. This church also housed a fragment of the true cross, on which Christ was crucified. In the 10 th century, the Church of St. Gregory of the Abughamrentists was built as a 12-sided chapel that has a dome carved with blind arcades. In the early 20 th century, a mausoleum was discovered buried under the church’s north side, likely containing the remains of Prince Grigor Pahlavuni. Unfortunately, like many of the sites at Ani, the prince’s sepulchre has been looted.

Under the control of the Shaddadids, buildings such as the mosque of Manuchihr were erected. The minaret still stands, from when the mosque was originally built in the late 11th century, perched on the edge of a cliff. The rest of the mosque’s features are likely later additions. The original purpose of the mosque is contested by the Armenians and Turks. Some believe that the building once served as a palace for the Armenian Bagratid dynasty and was later converted into a mosque. The other side of the argument maintains that the structure was originally built as a mosque, and thus was the first mosque in Anatolia. Both sides hold that the mosque is more important to their nationality.

The ruins of Manucehr Mosque, an 11th century mosque built among the ruins of Ani. ( CC BY SA 3.0 )

A Struggle For Preservation

In 1892, the
first archaeological excavations were conducted at the site of Ani, sponsored
by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and supervised by Nicholas Marr. From
this excavation, numerous buildings were uncovered, documented in academic
journals, and presented in guidebooks, and the entire site was surveyed.
Emergency repairs were undertaken on the buildings that were most at risk of
collapse, and a museum was established in the Minuchihr mosque and a
purpose-built building housing thousands of items found during the excavations.
In World War I, about 6000 artifacts were moved from the museum to the
collection of Yerevan’s State Museum of Armenian History; what remained in Ani
was eventually looted or destroyed. Turkey’s surrender at the end of the war
lead to the restoration of Ani to Armenian control. But, in 1921 Ani was
incorporated into the Republic of Turkey.

Today, Turkish-Armenian tensions leave the site hotly contested. Despite this, there is an ongoing effort by archaeologists and activists to preserve the ruins. Historians have long argued for the historical importance of Ani as a forgotten nexus, as a result Ani is now on a tentative list for recognition as a Unesco World Heritage Site. Restoration efforts began in 2011 by the World Monument Fund in partnership with the Turkish Ministry of Culture, and they may be able to preserve what is left of the ghost city.

18,000-Year-Old Puppy Frozen In Permafrost Puzzles Scientists

Meet Dogor, an 18,000-year-old pup recently unearthed in Siberian permafrost whose name means ‘friend’ in the Yakut language. The remains of the prehistoric pup are baffling researchers because genetic testing shows it’s not a wolf or a dog, meaning it could be an elusive ancestor of both.

Locals found the creature’s remains in the summer of 2018 in a frozen lump of ground near the Indigirka River, according to the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk. The puppy’s full body, thick hair, muzzle, and even whiskers and eyelashes had been preserved by permafrost, so much so that researchers at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden were able to sequence the animal’s DNA using a piece of rib bone. According to the results, Dogor was male, but even after two rounds of analysis the team could not determine whether he was a dog or a wolf.

‘It’s normally relatively easy to tell the difference between the two,’ David Stanton, a Centre for Palaeogenetics research fellow, told Amy Woodyatt at CNN. ‘We have a lot of data from it already, and with that amount of data, you’d expect to tell if it was one or the other. The fact that we can’t might suggest that it’s from a population that was ancestral to both to dogs and wolves.’

So the reason why scientists cannot determine the exact species could be that the find comes from the point where dogs were domesticated. According to Stanton, Dogor comes from an interesting time in canine evolution, when wolf species were dying out and early dogs were beginning to emerge.

‘As you go back in time, as you get closer to the point that dogs and wolves converge, [it becomes] harder to tell between the two,’ Stanton noted.

The history of just how and when dogs split from wolves is unclear. There’s a general agreement among scientists that modern gray wolves and dogs split from a common ancestor 15,000 to 40,000 years ago, explains Brian Handwerk previously for Smithsonian.com. How dogs became dogs, however, is contested. Some research suggests that dogs were domesticated by humans once, while other studies have found dogs were domesticated multiple times. Exactly where in the world wild canines became man’s best friend is also disputed. The origin of the human-animal bond has been traced to Mongolia, China and Europe.

Scientists disagree about how dogs ended up paired with people, too. Some suspect humans captured wolf pups and actively domesticated them. Others suggest that a strain of “friendly,” less aggressive wolves more or less domesticated themselves by hanging out near humans, gaining access to their leftover food.

Dorgor’s DNA could help unravel these mysteries. The team plans to do a third round of DNA testing that may help definitively place Dogor in the canine family tree. At the same time, since climate change is affecting the Siberian permafrost, people will be finding more and more ancient creatures unthawing.

Batman Existed In Mesoamerican Mythology And His Name Was Camazotz

As social media is abuzz with who might be cast in the next Batman movie, with concerns that some of the candidates might not be menacing enough to fill those big black boots, it might be time to look again at one of the bat figures that featured as an imposing power in Mesoamerican mythology – Camazotz.

Camazotz, (meaning ‘death bat’ in the Kʼiche’ Mayan language of Guatemala) originated deep in Mesoamerican mythology as a dangerous cave-dwelling bat creature. A cult following for the creature began amongst the Zapotec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico and the figure was later adopted into the pantheon of the Maya Quiche tribe and the legends of the bat god were later recorded in Maya literature.

Bats are considered to be menacing creatures in many cultures. They are nocturnal and thus associated with the night, which is also often associated with death. Many common species also have a relatively bizarre appearance, which makes them all the more off-putting for humans. It doesn’t help that there is a species that actually sucks blood (the vampire bat, Desmodus Rotundus ).

In the Maya culture, the bat god Camazotz is linked to death. Camazotz is also the name of a monstrous creature which inhabited a cave called “the house of bats” in the Popol Vuh. Most scholars believe that Camazotz was inspired by the common vampire bat, but others have suggested that it was based on a giant vampire bat that (probably) went extinct sometime during the Pleistocene or Holocene periods.

A Monster Bat

In the Popol Vuh, an ancient Mayan mythological text, Zotzilaha was the name of a cave inhabited by the Camazotz, a monster with a roughly humanoid body, the head of a bat, and a nose that resembled a flint knife. The monster was said to attack victims by the neck and decapitate them. In the Popol Vuh, it is recorded that this creature decapitated the Maya hero Hunahpu. Camazotz is also one of the four animal demons responsible for wiping out mankind during the age of the first sun.

Bat-like demons and monsters are common in South America and Central America. Another example of such a story is the Chonchon in Peru and Chile, which is thought to be created when a sorcerer, known as a kaku, performs a magical rite causing his severed head to sprout giant ears and talons at death. The giant ears become wings.

This ubiquity of giant bat monster legends leads many archaeologists to propose that the monsters have a basis in encounters with a real animal – such as the vampire bat. The vampire bat is favoured because of its historical association with bloodletting and sacrifice, It is, however, possible that the legends could be derived from a giant bat that was present during the Pleistocene or early Holocene – one which may still exist today.

Giant Vampire Bats

In 1988, a fossil of a vampire bat was discovered in the Mongas province of Venezuela. The bat was larger than the modern vampire bat by 25% and was dubbed Desmodus Draculae. It is more popularly known as the giant vampire bat.

Sites containing examples of it have been found in the Yucatan, Belize, northern Brazil, and Venezuela. In 2000, a tooth from D. Draculae was found in Argentina – much farther south of the modern range of the Desmodus genus. It is difficult to date exactly when D. Draculae went extinct, or if it went extinct at all. All of the sites have been dated so far to between the Late Pleistocene and Late Holocene.

The latest age found for a D. Draculae site is 300 BP (circa 1650 AD). The latest age in central America is hard to ascertain, but it is probably either Late Pleistocene or Holocene. These dates make it very possible that D. Draculae coexisted with humans in South America and Central America, and humans could have come into contact with D. Draculae, though towards the Late Holocene they would have been vanishingly rare.

D. Draculae Sightings

In addition to this evidence, there have been mysterious sightings of giant bats or bat-like creatures. One of the earliest sightings dates to 1947 when J. Harrison claimed to have seen several large flying creatures which were described as giant bats (though some people also claimed that they were living pterosaurs).

In the early 1950s, a Brazilian couple claimed that they encountered a bat-like creature in the same valley that fossils of D. Draculae were discovered in Brazil. Another incident occurred in 1975 when an outbreak of animal mutilations hit Puerto Rico. A farmer said that he was repeatedly attack by two grey bird-like creatures. These creatures were also seen by others throughout the mutilation outbreak. Another sighting occurred in the mid-1970s in Texas, when a farmer asserted that he had encountered bald bat or pterosaur-like creatures with short beaks and gorilla-like faces. Three toed prints of this creature were also said to have been found.

Did D. Draculae Inspire the Story of Camazotz?

The common vampire bat, D. Rotundus has an eight-inch (20.32 cm) wingspan. Since D. Draculae was 25% larger, it would have required more blood and probably would have attacked larger animals – and possibly even humans. It is uncountable that an attack by a rare giant bat would give rise to legends of supernatural monsters.

Comparisons of the fossil skulls of Desmodus draculae (left) with the Common Vampire Bat, Desmodus rotundus . (Illustrations by Jan Freedman , based on the Figures in Morgan et al. 1988)

Despite the tantalizing fossil evidence, and the strange stories about encounters with giant bats, there isn’t any indisputable evidence at the moment that D. Draculae was common enough to be encountered by ancient inhabitants of South America and Central America on a regular basis, or that the giant vampire bat is still alive today and could thus be the creature reported in giant bat sightings.

Nonetheless, the fact that the fossil evidence suggests that D. Draculae may have coexisted with humans for thousands of years in the Americas and the ubiquitous legends of bat-like monsters all over south and central America does make it a plausible connection.

At the foot of Mount Sinai, the mountain atop which God is said to have given Moses the Ten Commandments, lies St. Catherine’s Monastery, one of the world’s oldest continuously running libraries. St. Catherine’s is home to some of the world’s oldest and most valuable books and manuscripts, and the monks that watch over them.

These texts are largely manuscripts and are filled with mostly Greek and Latin. However, recently scientists have uncovered new languages in the manuscripts — and some that haven’t been used since the Dark Ages.

The only catch: the languages can’t be seen with the naked eye.

When the texts were originally written, the monks only wrote in ancient languages. However, the parchment they were written on at the time was valuable, and often subject to reuse.

Texts deemed less important were scrubbed clean from the parchment, which was then reused for more important information, often written in other more universal or modern languages. These texts with multiple layers of writing are known as palimpsests.

Now, using new technology, a team of researchers has developed a way to uncover the ancient writings in the palimpsests at St. Catherine’s and have discovered languages thought to be long lost. One such language, Caucasian Albanian, hasn’t been used since the 8th century. Other languages include Christian Palestinian Aramaic, which is a mix of Syriac and Greek.

To uncover the hidden writings, the scientists photographed the manuscripts using different parts of the light spectrum and run the images through an electronic algorithm. This allowed them to see the first writing put down on the pages.

Michael Phelps, a researcher at the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library in California, calls this development the beginning of a “new golden age of discovery.”

“The age of discovery is not over,” he said. “In the 20th century, new manuscripts were discovered in caves. In the 21st century, we will apply new techniques to manuscripts that have been under our noses. We will recover lost voices from our history.”

Phelps went on to praise the monastery for their record keeping and devotion to the preservation of history.

“I don’t know of any library in the world that parallels it,” he said. “The monastery is an institution from the Roman Empire that continues operating according to its original mission.”

However, he notes that though the monks deserve praise for recording history, they are also to blame for erasing the parchment that held it.

“At some point, the material the manuscript was on became more valuable than what was written on it,” Phelps said. “So it was deemed worthy of being recycled.”

Besides the discovery of the Caucasian Albanian language texts, the researchers also uncovered what is thought to be the first-known copy of the Bible written in Arabic, as well as the earliest examples of writings from the Greek philosopher Hippocrates.

A newly published study about the climate of the mid-Cretaceous period is adding stunning new questions to the mix as researchers claim to have discovered evidence of a 90-million-year-old temperate rainforest that once existed in the South Pole region. The study paints a picture of a very different prehistoric Antarctica, one that was much warmer and teeming with life.

An international team of geoscience researchers acquired their evidence while aboard the research icebreaker RV Polarstern in the Amundsen Sea near the Pine Island Glacier. Their drill rig descended to ocean depths of 3,300 feet and then penetrated through to 90 feet beneath the seafloor to extract a perfectly preserved sample of forest soil with a sediment core composed of fine-grained silt and clay.

“A sedimentary sequence recovered from the West Antarctic shelf—the southernmost Cretaceous record reported so far—and show that a temperate lowland rainforest environment existed at a palaeolatitude of about 82° S during the Turonian–Santonian age (92 to 83 million years ago).”

A CT scan of the dark-brownish gray soil revealed densely packed fossil roots, pollen, and spores of at least 65 types of vegetation including conifers, ferns, and flowering plants. No animal fossils were recovered but the soil was dated to about 90 million years ago, which was the golden age of the dinosaurs. With average annual temperatures of about 53-55 degrees Fahrenheit (12-13 Celsius)—68-77 Fahrenheit (20-25 Celsius) during the warmest summer months—scientists say this region, 560 miles from the South Pole, would have been a swampy rainforest full of dinosaurs, flying pterosaurs, and insects.

“The preservation of this 90-million-year-old forest is exceptional, but even more surprising is the world it reveals,”said the study’s co-author Professor Tina van de Flierdt, from the Department of Earth Science & Engineering at Imperial. “Even during months of darkness, swampy temperate rainforests were able to grow close to the South Pole, revealing an even warmer climate than we expected.”

The region would have been like an entirely different world from the frigid, glacier-encrusted South Pole we see today. Despite the region experiencing an annual four-month polar night, marine geologist Johann Klages of the Alfred Wegener Institute’s Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Germany says the estimated temperatures would be analogous to modern-day New York City.

Other scientists compared the temps to those found in New Zealand. The annual mean air temperature was only two degrees warmer than contemporary Germany. River and swamp water would have reached up to 20 degrees Celsius and annual rainfall volume was equal to contemporary Wales.

The study also has ramifications for climate research as the work suggests much higher atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels than previous climate models showed for the mid-Cretaceous period.

In addition to the stunning revelation of dense vegetation and flourishing life in pre-historic Antarctica, the research provides a new window into how climate conditions and CO2 levels dramatically shape life on Earth.